“What a weird situation,” said a friend of Mr. Wallace, Elizabeth Wurtzel, the writer and New York lawyer. She was close to the writer while he was writing “Infinite Jest,” she said, “and I don’t remember anything about the law coming up.” Moreover, Mr. Wallace held liberal views quite contrary to many of Justice Scalia’s conservative positions.

Nevertheless, beyond their shared interest in rhetoric, Justice Scalia “is an incredible game player, using intellectual honesty as a trope, and that is the kind of thing that David Wallace would just love,” said Ms. Wurtzel, whose books include “Prozac Nation” and “Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women.”

Of course. It's not possible they could've genuinely liked each other. Wallace would be fascinated by Scalia only because Scalia "is an incredible game player, using intellectual honesty as a trope."